The 31-year-old all-rounder will spearhead a Pakistan group which hasn’t ever been past the primary spherical in seven earlier appearances on the match.
Speaking to AFP by way of phone from South Africa the place the World Cup will get underway on Friday, Maroof stated: “There were times when no one or very few people would know that the Pakistan women’s cricket team exists.
“With extra fits and are living protection now we have earned popularity and appreciate.”
Pakistan’s women will need to vastly improve on past World Cup performances if they are to make an impact at the 10-team tournament.
They have won only seven of their 28 World Cup matches to date, although two were against India, in 2012 and 2016.
Maroof and her team-mates will be chasing a third victory over their arch-rivals when the two sides clash in Cape Town on February 12 to kick off their campaigns.
After taking up cricket as a 16-year-old, Lahore-born Maroof has seen first-hand how women’s cricket in Pakistan has developed over more than a decade.
Image credit: Bismah Maroof’s Twitter handle
But she also knows that plenty of work remains.
“I’m hoping it’s going to stay getting higher and we’re going to be getting because the amenities and popularity as the opposite best groups do,” she said.
“That is the important thing to growth.”
Pakistan are ranked seventh in the world, meaning they will have to over-perform if they are to make it past the first round at the World Cup for the first time.
At last year’s Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, Pakistan finished bottom of their group, behind T20 world champions Australia, India and Barbados, losing all three games.
They will be missing star pace bowler Diana Baig for the World Cup after she fractured a finger in a comprehensive 101-run one-day defeat to Australia last month.
But in Fatima Sana, 21, they have a bowling all-rounder who won the International Cricket Council’s emerging women’s cricketer award last year.
The title may well be beyond them, but Maroof says that the World Cup is “any other giant alternative for us to show off our skill.
“So I just want my team to play positive cricket and give their best.”